New educator resources to teach with confidence
22 May 2022
Our educational resources are downloadable materials for classroom or remote learning use, linking to stories in our digital library. Maximising the learning opportunities from stories, resources assist in exploring language features, literary devices, creative angles or a particular theme, helping students to delve deeper into stories. Download Story Box Library resources here, only available to active subscribers.
CBCA Book Week activities
Coming soon for CBCA Book Week 2022, our Book Week activities are classroom-ready activities for educators and librarians, designed to be used alongside shortlisted stories available on Story Box Library. Keep an eye on our social media pages and upcoming monthly newsletters for information and updates.
Reflect and Respond
Practical classroom ideas to explore themes and elements in the story further with lower, middle and upper primary students.
Note: Stories released after February 2022 include our Reflect and Respond sheets. These replace the original ‘Classroom Ideas’, for a more succinct resource which includes discussion prompts and activity ideas to further explore the themes, language and literary features within stories.
Reflect and Respond sheets provide teachers with practical ideas to help students respond to the text, by further exploring the story’s unique themes, text structure and language features.
Each downloadable PDF is structured to include discussion prompts to encourage deeper thinking, followed by activity ideas that provide opportunities for students to:
Make connections with the story, such as finding links with other stories, with themselves or with the world around them;
Explore a particular language feature used in the story, such as adjectives, symbolism, or a point of view;
Create writing responses via formats such as poetic writing or persuasive writing; and
Explore story themes with links to other curriculum areas, such as topics of wellbeing, sustainability and diversity.
Educators are encouraged to choose, combine, adapt, simplify or extend the ideas to tailor to the specific needs of students.
Find Reflect and Respond sheets via the Activities tab on each story page.
Available to active subscribers with a School or Professional subscription.
Activity Time
Creative and engaging learning experiences designed for younger learners. Activity Time includes downloadable PDFs and instructional videos that accompany most stories in our collection.
Designed for early learning and lower primary educators and students, Activity Time encourages children to enter the wonderful world of discovery and learning by going beyond the book. Promoting a playful and creative approach to learning and differing according to story themes and topics, each Activity Time provides instructions for fun and engaging learning experiences in the following areas:
Play
Art & Creativity
Outdoor & Nature Play
Family Games
Cooking
Exploring & Experimenting
Writing
Craft
Digital Creation
Find Activity Time instructions via the Activities tab on each story page.
Available to active subscribers with a Family, Library, School or Professional Subscription.
Units of Work
Comprehensive thematic lessons linked to the Australian curriculum for lower, middle and upper primary students.
Units of Work provide primary school educators with a series of lessons and printable resources focused around a theme linked to the Australian Curriculum. Each lesson within a unit includes a story as a springboard for further discussion and exploration of the theme. With more to be released, Story Box Library has released Units of Work lessons on the following topics: STEM, Emotions & Wellbeing and Humanities & Social Sciences.
Student Task Sheets
Activity response sheets for students to use after viewing the story, helping them explore language, literary features and themes within texts.
Student Task Sheets are downloadable PDFs designed to encourage independent student learning, via text response tasks after viewing the story. Each task sheet includes a QR code directly to the story, and three text response task options, each with a different focus and level of complexity. Find Student Task Sheets via the Activities tab on each story page.
Available to active subscribers with a School or Professional subscription.
Story Response Templates
Versatile templates to assist students with analysing and responding to texts in creative ways.
Including a range of graphic organisers, book response templates and writing frameworks, Story Response Templates are easy to use and visually appealing, and provide students with creative opportunities to explore stories further. Templates include T-Chart, Venn Diagram, Senses Wheel, Book Review, Character Profile, Letter Template, Menu Planner and many more.
All are available as editable PDFs and designed to foster the following literacy skills in students:
Deeper learning
Reading comprehension
Critical reading
Creative writing
Available to active subscribers with a School or Professional subscription.
Professional Development online events
To support educators, libraries and families, Story Box Library’s online webinars and events cover a range of topics related to children’s literature, storytelling and more.
Find training events, expert panel discussions, practical tips and more via our online events. Attending and watching webinars will contribute towards meeting Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, and will provide learning that contributes towards LIANZA professional registration.